Wayzgoose is Coming!

The 2009 Gaspereau Press Wayzgoose

Gaspereau Press is preparing for its twelfth annual Wayzgoose and Open House, which will be held on Saturday October 22 at the Gaspereau Press printing works.

This year, we are pleased to have letterpress printer and wood engraver George Walker. George is presently promoting his new trade book, A is for Alice, which was published by our good friends at The Porcupine’s Quill in Erin, Ontario. Click here to see an amusing video of George and the Inksters at The Porcupine’s Quill.

We’re going to keep George pretty busy while he’s here. He’ll be give a workshop in the morning, help entertain guests during the open house in the afternoon, and present an illustrated talk on the future of the book in the evening.

The evening will also feature readings from new books by Montreal novelist Norm Ravvin and Cape-Breton-based poet Sean Howard. I will also be giving brief tributes to two important and recently lost figures in the constellation of Canadian letters: Douglas Lochhead and Glenn Goluska.



The great Canadian typographer and letterpress printer Glenn Goluska, who died last week, was a great frequenter of the Gaspereau Wayzgoose. I stumbled on this short and truly amateur video clip of Glenn at last years’s event, when he met his Alabama counterpart Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., who was the guest artist at last year’s event. Shortly after this video was taken, Amos informed Glenn that all the wooden type in the world belonged to him, but that he was okay with Glenn using it for a while if he treated it nicely.


Robert Bringhurst and Glenn Goluska at the Gaspereau Wayzgoose

We’re still ironing out the details, but in a week or two we’ll be posting a schedule of wayzgoose events and happening. The only two activities that have limited space and require preregistration are the workshops. They will run on Saturday October 22 from 9:00 until noon. There is a $40 registration fee for the workshops. Each workshop is limited to 10 participants and are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. You can register for them by emailing info@gaspereau.com or calling us a 902 678 6002. This year’s wayzgoose workshops are:

BOOKBINDING. Participants will complete a binding with the help of expert conservationist an binder Ruth Legge. Materials are provided.

THE JOYS OF PRINTMAKING. George Walker will demonstrate and discuss a number of letterpress printmaking methods. No experience required. This workshop is intended to introduce the participants to the history, tools, techniques and artistic possibilities of printmaking.

Other activities in the works are a letterpress-related film screening in cooperation with Wolfville’s Fundy Film, an author’s salon, our famous offcut paper sale, and the usual hanging-out in the printshop, talking, printing, papermaking and typecasting. The wayzgoose is always an amazingly good time, even for those of us who host it, so I hope that you’ll be able to join us.


Casting slugs at the 2010 Wayzgoose

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Glenn Goluska

June 26, 1947 – August 13, 2011



Glenn Goluska, one of Canada’s great typographers, died in Montreal on Saturday after a brief battle with cancer.

Glenn grew up in Chicago and came to Canada as a student at the University of Toronto. After graduation, Glenn worked briefly in the United States before landing (on a whim, while on vacation, his then-wife Anne waiting in the car) a job as a typesetter at Coach House Press in Toronto. The work Glenn did at Coach House Press constitutes one of the most important bodies of book design in modern Canadian publishing, on par with the accomplishments of Tim Inkster, Frank Newfeld or Allan Fleming.

Glenn left Coach House to pursue letterpress printing full-time, producing many influential books and broadsides and completing commissions for people like Margaret Atwood and the Bronfman family in Montreal. His imprints were Imprimerie Dromadaire and Nightshade Press.

Later in his career, Glenn relocated to Montreal, where he worked for the Canadian Centre for Architecture and then as a freelancer for McGill-Queens Press.

Glenn was diagnosed with lung cancer last fall. I was able to travel to Montreal twice this spring while he was still relatively healthy, including in May when he was awarded the Robert Reid lifetime achievement medal by the Alucin Society of Canada, recognizing his considerable contribution to Canadian design. Glenn is survived by two brothers, his first wife, Anne, and his second wife, Bernadette.


Bernadette, Glenn and Stan Bevington in Montreal this past May

A number of tributes to Glenn’s life are being discussed by his friends and colleagues, including an exhibition and some sort of publication (a catalogue or a book). One tribute is more immediate: Glenn’s long-time friend Rod McDonald has designed a typeface named Goluska, which will have its first public showing in the forthcoming issue (No. 21) of Parenthesis, which I am producing for the Fine Press Book Association in my shop this very week. This issue contains a spread of reproductions of some of Glenn’s design work and a short tribute by Chester Gryski. When I was designing the jacket, which I printed letterpress on my vandercook, I was aware that Glenn’s life was winding down; its somber tones are a quiet tribute to the passing of a friend.

Glenn had a strong bond with Gaspereau, and was a frequent attendee to our wayzgoose and open house. There was a kinship in the swagger of our design styles and our love of fine typography; admiration that was mutual. I was surprised and honoured a number of years ago when Glenn asked me if I would take on his letterpress shop once he died and move it to Gaspereau Press. At the time, Glenn’s death was a distant, abstract idea to both of us, but now it is as bold and black and real as oversized wooden type inked and slammed into a piece of dampened paper. We’ll sort out the logistics of that move in the coming months and think about how we will keep his memory alive by using the machinery and type that he loved to make beautiful things.

This is a short and incomplete tribute, and I will write more of Glenn and his work as I have time to reflect. For now, I think I’ll just find a little Scott Joplin to play and raise a glass to my great brother in letters.




ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER